The descent of Curiosity on to the surface of Mars is one of those events that will be remembered (in awe) forever. The 7 minutes of terror the rover went through to land safely on Mars was impressive both in its planning and execution, and everyone at NASA should be very proud of their achievement.

We are also lucky that the Curiosity team at NASA thought to record and share the last 2 minutes of the descent via the 2MP Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) camera on board Curiosity. It allowed us to see the descent from the moment the heat shield is released right through to the thrusters gently placing Curiosity on the surface.

YouTube user hahahaspam took that footage and interpolated it to 25 frames per second. It took four days in total to put the video you see above together, but I think you’ll agree it was worth it. And it may not be the best version to appear as others are continuing to work with the footage and improve it further.

Curiosity is already hard at work on Mars. We’ve seen it interrogate a rock with the ChemCam laser, it has started moving around, and there’s going to be a ton of new footage captured by its cameras over the next couple of years. This video and the handful of images being released by NASA is thankfully just the beginning.